A Word of Comfort for the Sick Soldier:
Electronic Edition.Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library
Services supported the electronic publication of this title.Text scanned (OCR) byAllen VaughnText encoded by Elizabeth Wright and Jill KuhnFirst edition, 1999ca. 25KAcademic Affairs Library, UNC-CHUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999.

A Word of Comfort for the Sick Soldier. 8 p.[S. l.][s. n.][between 1861 and 1865]4937 Conf. (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998EnglishSoldiers -- Religious life -- Confederate States of
America.Soldiers -- Confederate States of America -- Conduct of
life.Consolation.Christian life.Tracts.Confederate States of America -- Religion.Confederate States of America -- Church history.United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Religious
aspects.2000-04-03, Celine Noel and Wanda Gunther revised TEIHeader and created catalog
record for the electronic edition.1999-11-30, Jill Kuhn finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.1999-11-28, Elizabeth Wright finished TEI/SGML encoding1999-11-17, Allen Vaughn finished scanning (OCR) and proofing.
A WORD OF COMFORT FOR THE SICK SOLDIER.

IT is bad, under any circumstances, to be sick. Pain, nausea,
emaciation, feebleness, wearisome days, sleepless nights,
depression of spirits, and a dread of greater sufferings, and
of approaching death, are the usual accompaniments of sickness.
Only those who have tasted know the bitterness of
the cup. How hard it is to endure, through tedious days and
nights, the burning of fever, the throbbing of pain, and the
prostration of strength! But the condition of the sick or
wounded soldier, in the camp, or in the hospital, is peculiarly
trying. Far from home and kindred, he feels lonely and
desolate. No friendly voice utter words of encouragement
to him, no familiar countenounce sheds its cheering light
upon him, and no kind hand anticipates and supplies his
wants. His narrow cot, his bed of straw, and his coarse
fare, remind him, by painful contrast, of the comfort and
luxuries which he enjoyed in his distant and loved home.—
The sighs, and groans, and dying struggles of his fellow-sufferers,
disturb his slumbers, and fill his waking hours with
gloom. And to all these evils must be added, though it is
to be hoped in few in few instances, the rudeness of surgeons,
and the inattention and heartlessness of nurses.

Sincerely do I sympathize with the sick soldier in his suffering
and desolation. I come to you, my brother, not to
staunch your wounds, or check your disease, or mitigate
your pains, or supply your bodily wants—though I would
gladly do all these things—but to offer you words of comfort
and encouragement.

Do you love Christ? This is an important question. You
may not be able to answer it with confidence. Some Christians
are strong in faith, having attained to the full assurance
of hope, and can joyfully say with Paul, “I know
whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to
keep that which I have committed unto him against that
day.” It is cause for unfeigned thanksgiving to God, if you
belong to this favored class. But other Christians are
“weak in faith,” having their minds clouded by doubts, and
fears. With sinking Peter, they subjected themselves to the
just rebuke, “Wherefore dost thou doubt?” To this class
it may be your infirmity or your sin to belong. In some
Christians, doubts are a weakness, arising from an unfortunate
temperament, or a deranged nervous system. Viewing
every subject on its dark side, they are naturally inclined
to be undecided, irresolute and discouraged. In their bosoms
doubts find a congenial soil, spring up, and grow apace.
Persons of this class are entitled to our sincere sympathy,
and should be pitied rather than blamed—encouraged rather
than reproved. These are the lambs that the good Shepherd
gathers with his arms and tenderly carries in his bosom.
Isa. xl, 11. But doubts spring more frequently from neglected
privileges, forsaken duties, or sins indulged, than from
infirmity. That faith is not of God, but of the devil, which
the commission of known sin does not shake. If a man who
lives in sin has no doubt of his acceptance with God, he has
reason to fear that God has sent him strong delusion that he
should believe a lie.—2 Thess. i, 11.

Perhaps, you are, or were, a professor of religion. You
can call to remembrance “the blessedness you knew when
first you saw the Lord.” Christ appeared to you as “altogether
lovely”—precisely adapted to your spiritual necessities,
having all fulness dwelling in him. His mercy, faithfulness,
and glory were your meditation, delight aud song,
by day and by by night. Then was his word your food, his
house your home, his people your companions, his service
your employment, and his glory your aim. Then you found
it sweet to mingle with the disciples of Jesus in prayer and
praise. Then you supposed that your mountains stood
strong, and that you should never be moved. But a sad
change has come over your spirit. Christ did not forsake
you, but you have forsaken him. The world engrossed your
time and affections, sinners enticed you, your privileges
were undervalued and neglected, dnties were forgotten, and
sins, it may be, were knowingly committed, and the natural
consequences ensued—the light of God's countenance,
and the strengthening influence of his spirit, were withdrawn,
and you sank into insensibility and doubts. You cannot
relinquish your hope—you would not exchange it for the
world—but it does not sustain and cheer you. You are not
without evidence of your acceptance with God, but it is
dim and unsatisfactory. The brightness of your past is in
painful contrast with the darkness of your present experience.

Do not despond, my brother. You have cause for shame,
sorrow, weeping and anxiety, but not for despair. If God
has begun a good work in you, he will perform it to the
day of Jesus Christ. The same mercy that received you at,
first, will receive you again. “Return unto me, and I will
return unto you,” saith the Lord. “Remember, therefore
from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first
works.” Do you feel your sins to be a burden? Do you
deplore the hardness of your heart! Do you pray that God
would restore unto you the joy of salvation? Do you, renouncing
your own righteousness, trust in Christ for deliverance?
Is your heart drawn toward Christ, and toward his
people? These are encouraging signs of grace. Go to
Christ just as you did in the beginning, with the burden of
your guilt, the plague of your heart, and your sense of
unworthiness, and trust in his mercy and faithfulness, and he
will in no wise cast you out. Say with holy Job, “Though
he slay me, yet will I trust in him,” That same Jesus that
bore your sins on the cross, ever lives to make intercession
for you. He has never rejected a suppliant sinner and he
will not reject you.

“Raise thy down cast eyes and seeWhat crowds his throne surround!There, though sinners once like thee,Have full salvation found.Yield not then to unbelief,While he says, ‘There yet is room;’Though of sinners thou art chief,Since Jesus calls thee, come.”

Your sickness, my brother, did not come from chance.
Where God reigns, and he reigns everywhere, there is no
chance, but events are all wisely ordered. The bow may be
drawn at a venture, but God directs the arrow. The pestilence
that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that
wasteth at noon-day, are under his guidance. “The Lord
hath erected his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom
ruleth over all.”

Your disease is of divine appointment. Its kind, degree
and circumstances, were all determined by the Lord.—
Why he afflicted you, it may be impossible for you fully to
comprehend. He takes no pleasure in your sufferings; “for
he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.”
There was a necessity for your trial, and it is wisely adapted
to that necessity. The cup which you are called to drink is
bitter, but it is medicinal, and was mixed and administered
by one who loves you.

Christ will be near you in your sickness. It is a great
trial that your dear kindred and friends, who would nurse
you with so much sympathy and tenderness, are far from
you in your sufferings; but it is an unspeakable comfort
that Christ is near you. From him neither time, nor place,
nor disasters can separate you; “for he hath said, I will
never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” He is a sympathizing
High-priest—\a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.—
If Christ be with you, there is no cause to be alarmed at
any evil. “Thus saith the Lord, Fear not: for I have redeemed
thee, I have called thee by name: thou art mine.—
When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee;
and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when
thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” He, that preserved
the Hebrew worthies in the fiery furnace, can safely
cary you through the furnace of affliction.

Christ can, not only support, but comfort and cheer you
in your loneliness and sufferings. He can turn the darkness
of night into the brightness of morning. No cup is so
bitter but that he can sweeten it. When God makes the
bed of his people in sickness, as he has promise to do,
they find it ‘soft as downy pillows are.” Many disciples of
Christ have experienced a higher joy on beds of langor and
pain than they ever knew in health and prosperity. “I had
great joy,” said a returned missionary, “when after years
of absence, among the heathen, I first saw the mountains of
my native country; but it was nothing to the joy I felt when
I expected soon to die, and go to my heavenly Father.

Christ, my friend, if you love him, will not only comfort
you in your sickness, but convert it into a rice blessing. Affliction
enters into that system by which God prepares his
children for heaven; “for our light affliction, which is but
for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory.” Sickness is a fatherly chastisement,
not joyous but grievous, with which God exercises his children—
Heb. xii, 6. It teaches us lessons that we need to
learn, but which we can learn only in the school of affliction.
It is easy to declaim on the vanity of the world, and
on the preciousness of the divine promises; but only the
afflicted, tempest-tossed Christian has an experimental, efficacious
knowledge of these things. He can testify that the
world is vain, for he has felt its utter impotence to relieve
and comfort him. He knows, because he has tasted, that
the Lord is gracious. What the crucible is to gold, affliction
is to the christian—it purifies and brightens him. It
restrains the turbulent passions, mortifies the corrupt lusts,
exercises and develops the spiritual graces, and improves the
life. As there are some flowers that flourish only on the
beetling cliffs, so there are Christian graces that thrive only
in the bleak storms of adversity. When shall we find patience,
submission, deadness to the world, strong confidence
in God, and the bright hope of heaven, as we find them in
the chamber of sickness and suffering? If we search for
eminent piety, we shall be likely to discover it, not in scenes
of prosperity, not in the dwellings of the healthful and vigorous,
but in the house of affliction: and on the bed of langor
and pain. Many children of God may say with David,
“Before I was afflicted, I went astray; but now do I keep
thy commandments.”

There are many most precious privileges, my brother, of
which sickness cannot deprive you. It may detain you from
the public worship of God, incapacitate you to read the
scriptures, deprive you of Christian sympathy and intercourse,
and of all opportunities for active usefulness; but
while reason keeps its throne, it cannot prevent you from
praying to your heavenly Father. The throne of grace is
accessible at all times, from all places, to all the sons of God.
If you cannot turn on your coach, you may turn your eyes
to the blood besprinkled mercy seat. If you cannot speak,
you may pray:

“Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,Uttered or unexpressed,The motion of a hidden fire,That trembles in the breast.”

You may be excluded from all outward privileges; but
you cannot be excluded from “fellowship with the Father,
and with his Son Jesus Christ.” On the promises of God
you may meditate, in the silent watches of the night, and
from them derive unfailing strength, consolation and hope.
The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, dwells peculiarly with the
afflicted saint; and you may well endure the want of all
earthly good to enjoy his presence. Where he is, there are
light, and liberty and peace, and the fruits of righteousness,
and the “dawn of heaven below.”

Should God raise you from your sick bed, and prolong
your life, as I hope he may, the benefits of your affliction
will appear. Chastisements, for the present, are not joyous
but grievous, but afterward yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
It is the shining of the sun, after the storm has
passed, that diffuses cheerfulness. It is returning health,
after protracted and painful sickness, that fills the heart
with gratitude, and gladness, and holy resolutions. If you
come forth from this furnace, it will be to reflect more
brightly the glory of your Redeemer. The renewal of your
bodily strength and beauty will be but the symbol of the
more important renovation of your inner man. You will
not be delivered from your warfare, but you will be more
vigilant, more courageous, and more hopeful in the conflict.
When Peter was converted from his self-confidence, he was
better qualified than he could have been before his fall, to
strengthen and encourage his brethren.—Luke xxii: 32.—
And should God deliver you from this affliction, you will be
better fitted, than otherwise you could be, to sympathize
with the suffering, to pray for them, and to instruct and
comfort them. As long as you live, you will be a better and
more useful Christian from the discipline and experience
which you are receiving in the hospital. Your sojourn there
may, through grace, be your brighest days.

But should you die in the hospital, as die you may, death
will be your gain. “The day of one's death is better than
the day of one's birth,” says Solomon—this is true of every
good man. If God, my afflicted brother, should see fit to
remove you from the hospital to heaven, what a happy, glorious
change it will be. Your body may be borne to the
tomb, without pomp, and without tears, and be deposited in
its lonely bed, among the multidudes of its pale and sleeping
compatriots; but your spirit, refined and beautified, will be
carried by angels to the “bosom of Abraham.” Then how
light, and yet how beneficial will seem all the sufferings of
the past. Then it will appear that God led you forth by the
right way, that he might conduct you to a city of habitation.
Then you will join that favored throng, who have come “out
of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have
made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” And of whom
the celestial eder said, “Therefore are they before the
throne of God, and serve him day and night in histemple:
and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither
shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb
which is in the midst of them shall feed them, and lead
them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe
all tears from their eyes.”—Rev. vii: 14—17.

WALKING WITH GOD.
Oh for a closer walk with God;A calm and heavenly frame;A light to shine upon the roadThat leads me to the Lamb!Where is, the blessedness I knewWhen first I saw the Lord?Where is the soul-refreshing viewOf Jesus, and his word?What peaceful hours I once enjoy'dHow sweet their memory still!But they have left an aching void,The world can never fill.Return, O holy Dove, return,Sweet messenger of rest;I hate the sins that made me mournAnd drove thee from my breast.